because, during his course at the baths, the King, under pressure of threats, had given audience to the French ambassador for four consecutive days, and had exposed his royal person to insolent treatment from this foreign agent without ministerial assistance.  Through this inclination to take state business upon himself in person and alone, the King had been forced into a position which I could not defend; in my judgment his Majesty while at Ems ought to have refused every business communication from the French negotiator, who was not on the same footing with him, and to have referred him to the department in Berlin.  The department would then have had to obtain his Majesty’s decision by a representation at Ems, or, if dilatory treatment were considered useful, by a report in writing.  But his Majesty, however careful in his usual respect for departmental relations, was too fond not indeed of deciding important questions personally, but, at all events, of discussing them, to make a proper use of the shelter with which the Sovereign is purposely surrounded against importunities and inconvenient questionings and demands.  That the King, considering the consciousness of his supreme dignity which he possessed in so high a degree, did not withdraw at the very beginning from Benedetti’s importunity was to be attributed for the most part to the influence exercised upon him by the Queen, who was at Coblenz close by.  He was seventy-three years old, a lover of peace, and disinclined to risk the laurels of 1866 in a fresh struggle; but when he was free from the feminine influence, the sense of honor of the heir of Frederick the Great and of a Prussian officer always remained paramount.  Against the opposition of his consort, due to her natural feminine timidity and lack of national feeling, the King’s power of resistance was weakened by his knightly regard for the lady and his kingly consideration for a Queen, and especially for his own Queen.  I have been told that Queen Augusta implored her husband with tears, before his departure from Ems to Berlin, to bear in mind Jena and Tilsit and avert war.  I consider the statement authentic, even to the tears.

Having decided to resign, in spite of the remonstrances which Roon made against it, I invited him and Moltke to dine with me alone on the 13th, and communicated to them at table my views and projects for doing so.  Both were greatly depressed, and reproached me indirectly with selfishly availing myself of my greater facility for withdrawing from service.  I maintained the position that I could not offer up my sense of honor to politics, that both of them, being professional soldiers and consequently without freedom of choice, need not take the same point of view as a responsible Foreign Minister.  During our conversation I was informed that a telegram from Ems, in cipher, if I recollect rightly, of about 200 “groups,” was being deciphered.  When the copy was handed to me it showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed